


beautiful weeds

by farnear



Category: SAKANA (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Non-Linear Narrative, Rule 63, they're girls. every single one of them.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 09:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11399889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farnear/pseuds/farnear
Summary: She came by with a succulent. ‘I realize a bouquet would be more appropriate,’ she said, ‘but dead flowers make me sad’.





	beautiful weeds

**Author's Note:**

> what if your fave hot mess who butchers fish for a living was a girl? 
> 
> the names from mad rupert's art on the subject - yukiko (yuudai), tsuruko (taisei), tsuhugi (jiro), hatsu (taro). also shizuru (shigeru), ran (arata) and jun (chie). the title comes from mary oliver's 'morning glories'

 

 

Tsuruko washes the crate to get rid of the fish smell, then fills the Styrofoam container with ice, and puts Hime inside. She calls the registration at Itomori to ask if they permit burials of cats. She calls a car rental agency and she calls her boss, and then Mrs Sakana. Tsuhugi and Hatsu told their aunt that there has been a death in the family, that Yukiko must to go to her hometown, far in the Kiso mountains. Tsuruko accepts and passes on the condolences. Yukiko isn’t sure what to do with them, so she blows her nose and stares at Tsuruko. As long as it takes to her to hide Yukiko in a hug.

 

The drive is five hours. Yukiko keeps the crate on her knees, dull under the weight. She falls asleep and wakes up in Hokuto with an ache in her neck. The lights on the crossing are red. Tsuruko’s fingers are tapping against the wheel. No nail polish. She must’ve forgotten. She never forgets. Yukiko holds tighter to the crate.

 

 

Yukiko calls her mom. She goes out to the balcony and has a smoke. Then another. Then, she calls.

‘Hi - yeah. No, good. But, Hime – ‘ she tries to swallow a sob, then doesn’t. ‘Yeah. I’m coming to – yeah. With, uh, a roommate. No, a new roommate. No, the other – no. We don’t keep in touch. Uh-huh. Yeah. Mom? She, my new roommate – we, uh, we’re together.’

They have planted flowers in the balcony flower pots but nothing grew. Not yet. Yukiko stares at the rain-wet soil.

‘Mom? You’re kinda quiet. I – no, I’m. I am happy.’ She wipes the snot from her face. ‘I am, like, when I’m not preparing to bury my – yeah. Yeah, I know you know. Just nervous. Yeah. Tomorrow.’

She takes out the third cigarette. Turns it over. Puts it in a crevice between two flower pots. Future Yukiko might need it more.

 

 

Yukiko came there once with Hime. She brought Hime’s bed, and her litter box, and her two toys, and ten cans of tuna brick, the brand Hime liked best.

‘My roommate, she –‘ Yukiko didn’t know how to put this. She came home and Hime scratched her when she tried to pick her up, and ran off as soon as she let her down. Ran was drunk. Yukiko didn’t know what you had to do to a cat to make it freak out like that, and she didn’t want to ask. ‘She doesn’t get on with animals.’

‘You worry –’ Yukiko raised the tea bowl not to see the funny look her mom had. ‘About the cat.’

 

 

‘I’m back!’ she calls, and squats to take off her sneakers. New ones. The old pair was caked with mud, blood and oil, so she figured next time she should get some wellies just for the market and save the sneakers for social engagements. Dates, funerals.

‘Welcome home.’

Madoka Tanaka stands on the step, long in a long dress from her pregnancy, now folding on her hips. An apron, hair in plaits, eyes narrow. The edge of Madoka’s glasses shines out of her apron pocket. She can’t stand the clouds of steam from the pot.

She waits. Yukiko looks at Tsuruko. Barefoot and tired after the drive, with the crate in her arms, Tsuruko is beaming.

‘A traditional house, isn’t it? I love them, but never lived in one. You keep it in a superb state, m’am’.

‘Ah, well,’ Madoka moves her hand in a comfortable gesture. ‘Let me show you the room.’ Yukiko breathes out.

The room is Yukiko’s old, a shoebox with a window and two futons left in the corner. Yukiko unrolls one when they are left alone, and flops down, head buried in the pillow.

‘I love this house,’ Tsuruko repeats in an excited whisper, unpacking the contents of her slim suitcase and of Yukiko’s _Visit Tsukiji_ backpack. The fish pattern paled in the laundry. ‘It’s a pretty piece of land, too. Nobody wants to buy it?’

Yukiko turns on her back and forces her eyes to open. She wants a nap. She wants Hime back. She says, ‘No, ‘s right between the highway and the railway tracks. Fucking loud.’ She yawns. ‘Couldn’t sleep when we moved here, and mom got worse before she got better. But,’ Tsuruko unfolds a t-shirt, smooths it, and refolds it. Yukiko isn’t sure whose it is. ‘But it’s the place we have.’

‘I see,’ Tsuruko says, quiet. She gets up and puts the t-shirts in the drawer. Her steps send dust up in the air. It flickers in the sun. Tsuruko doesn’t fit here, tall and light. Yukiko wants to say she is happy Tsuruko is here, nevertheless. She asks, ‘Wanna see the town, after –‘ She can’t.

Tsuruko turns to her and smiles.

 

They go after the funeral. Tsuruko talks all the time and keeps resetting the camera in her phone, not sure of the definition and of the light, but happy with any she ends up with. She takes pictures of the curved roofs hit with sunlight and of the stairs cut in the mountainside. She bends and touches the stone with her hand, traces the hollow people of Itomori made in it,  step after step.

‘You’ll get dirt on your hands.’

‘I can wash them.’ She wipes her hand in her skirt, and gets up. ‘And where did you go to school?’

‘Up,’ Yukiko tries to remember the position of the school against the sunset. ‘There,’ she decides and throws her hand in a direction she hopes is right.

‘A school on a hill,’ Tsuruko smiles. ‘Like in a story. Any cherry trees there?’

‘Nah. Just pines. But,’ Yukiko says so Tsuruko doesn’t sulk, ‘there was like, a school festival. With the lanterns, and sweets on the sticks.’

Tsuruko bounces back and almost pushes Yukiko off the path. She grabs Yukiko’s hand, so Yukiko doesn’t fall in the mud.

‘Aw, so cool! And did you wear a yukata?’ Yukiko looks at their fingers, laced together. They’re alone here, at the bottom of the stairs and the forest full of wind.

‘Yeah,’  Yukiko lets it be. ‘My mom’s. She did my hair and shit. ‘cause I had it longer, back then.’

Of course, Tsuruko raises her other hand to Yukiko’s hair. She’s been growing it out, so now it touches the tips of her arms. She isn’t sure when was the last time she washed it though, and for a moment, she wants Tsuruko to stop and get her hands off. But then she lets this be, too.

 

 

It happened just when Yukiko started second year of high school. Madoka had a heart condition. It was a problem her salary from the street-cleaning couldn’t fix, even with the extra Lars sent. She always said she would be fine, and wore a face-mask when the winds carried thick smog over from the continent, but one summer day she collapsed. Yukiko remembers the whizz of an electric fan in the school office, the cold blow on her neck as she held the phone with a call from the hospital.

Next week, they were in Itomori. The sky was high and clear blue. Mountain air bit the insides of their mouth when they breathed. The light was sharp like a knife, and on the sunniest days, Yukiko cried the moment she opened her eyes. They moved to a dusty house stuck in a field of brown grass. They cleansed it of death and cleaned of the years it stood empty, a home to birds. Yukiko started a new school, and Madoka started a new job, a janitor at the town council’s office. Yukiko came there after her classes to walk home with her. She didn’t have anything better to do, anyway.

Itomori was boring as fuck. The only people who lived there were children, elders and those who were losers enough not to get out at the first chance, farmers and priests. All Yukiko could do there was to climb the endless stairs, spend her money on two gachapon machines in the grocery shop, and – if she were lucky – catch half an hour with the computer at the post office.

She didn’t make friends at school. The kids there might’ve as well came out from the same cradle: they had the same lives and they spoke in the same funny dialect Yukiko cared not to take up. She wanted to go back to Tokyo and forget it all, the dusty house and the stuffy town, where she always felt the gaze of these old women, who stopped on the street or at the market, and measured her with blank faces. They stared at Yukiko as if she were a strange animal: long-limbed, yellow-haired, fatherless. So screw them, Yukiko decided, screw them all and get out, and get Itomori out of her, like dirt from under your nails.

The only person who talked to her was the vice-president of her class, who always reminded Yukiko it was Yukiko’s turn to clean the classroom. Sometimes, she stood by Yukiko’s desk for a while longer and asked some silly question like, what Yukiko liked to do best in Tokyo – if she went to karaoke, if she went to a maid café, if she was ever mugged. Yukiko hadn’t done any of these things, but she said she had. She liked the vice-president’s smile. She smiled as if she felt she shouldn’t have, and Yukiko was proud to win it from her.

The festival was organized for a centenary of some temple or other. It was her third year. Her mom wrapped her in her old yukata, white stripes and irises on navy, and put long needles in Yukiko’s hair. The night was warmer than October should be, and Yukiko felt her feet sweat in thick white socks, the blood beat in her face.

It was awful: the noise, and the crowd, and the sticky sauce dripping from the rice balls. She had one, and half of it was left on her hands. She forgot to pack tissues, so she just sat on the bench that was just a mossy trunk, waited till she could leave. Not too soon, so her mom would believe she enjoyed it. She was so happy to put the old cloth on Yukiko. Hadn’t worn it since Lars, she said. It was for unmarried girls. She must have been beautiful in it, with her willowy looks and stark dark hair. Yukiko, though. She dug her fingers in the moss.

‘Tanaka?’ It was the vice-president. Yukiko couldn’t see her face, dark against the blaze of the festival. She nodded, because she couldn’t say a word. There was a lump in her throat. ‘Are you having fun?’ Yukiko spluttered, but the sound was drowned in the crack of burning wood nearby. The vice-president turned the fan in her hands, and then said, ‘Your yukata is very nice.’

‘My mom’s,’ Yukiko breathed out.

‘Ah.’ The vice-president hid her hands behind her back. ‘It’s very nice to see spring flowers in autumn, is all. Everyone wears a pattern with chrysanthemums, or cranes. Yet here you are, in irises’. Yukiko didn’t know what to say: sorry, or thank you. Or, please stay. ‘Sorry,’ the vice-president said. ‘I should go, my friends –‘

The next morning she came by Yukiko’s desk and apologized for her forwardness. She didn’t come by  again – she wasn’t a vice-president this year – she needed more time to study for the exams to the agricultural school. Yukiko couldn’t get the smell of the smoke out from her hair.

 

 

They stop by the grocery shop and get pre-canned bubble tea for the ride, and packets of dried algae to snack on. While Tsuruko opens the trunk and puts her suitcase and Yukiko’s backpack in, Yukiko leans against the car and takes a bite of the algae. It’s mostly vinegar, but when she chews it, she gets to the familiar sea taste. There’s a bus stop next to the parking and a woman at the bus stop, with a handkerchief on her head and a basket on her hip. Yukiko sticks her tongue out. The woman turns. When Tsuruko starts the car, Yukiko switches on the radio, and ups the volume just as they pass the stop. So she’s petty. Whatever. She just buried her cat. The music blasts, and Yukiko slowly curls her hand on the wheel, on Tsuruko’s hand.

 

 

 

Yukiko asked her if she would like to buy an octopus. The stock was subpar, because Mura was a bitch and a slacker, but the octopus was up to the standard.

‘Cool,’ the woman grinned. ‘Sure, I might.’ She said it as if it was a joke between old friend. For a moment, Yukiko wanted nothing more in, but to sell the woman octopi on every next day of her life. Then, the woman said: ‘But I should find Hatsu Sakana first’.

Of course. Yukiko wanted to scream. But it was her stall, and she was the stall supervisor, and she had her dignity. She hissed.

'Hatsu.' The woman nodded energetically. Of course. The Sakanas would use their working space to socialize and make Yukiko their go-between. Why the fuck not.  'You,' Yukiko glared at the woman. 'Wait there. And keep your distance from the counter.'

Tsuruko didn’t.

 

 

She came by with a succulent. ‘I realize a bouquet would be more appropriate,’ she said, ‘but dead flowers make me sad’. Yukiko didn’t answer. It still sent her into a state, to see Tsuruko on her staircase, next to the maintenance cart that stood there for the last two years. She accepted the plant. She stepped back into her apartment and leaned against the wall, did some half-assed breathing exercise, then moved to find a spot for the pot. It ended up on a window sill, between an ash tray and a newspaper Yukiko fished out of the trash bin to do the crossword. ‘A succulent,’ she told Hime. Hime meowed. ‘I know, right.’

She closed the door and followed Tsuruko down the stairs with a painful awareness of the trash newspaper’s presence in her flat.

‘Where to?’ Yukiko asked.

‘Y’know,’ Tsuruko half-turned and grinned at her. ‘I’m gonna make it a surprise today. If,’ she added quickly. ‘That’s okay?’

‘Just fabulous.’ Yukiko said and winced. Tsuruko didn’t hear the difference and went on to skip every other skip, but Yukiko stopped and, with some wrenching of hands, mumbled. ‘I mean. Okay. That’s okay’.

‘Cool!’ Tsuruko said, then jumped over last three steps and whooped. ‘We’re gonna take Hibiya line first.’

Yukiko took Hibiya every day to work, so she knew the station and managed to get the ticket before Tsuruko offered to spot it. She had less luck on busier Higashi-ginza station, where they changed.

Yukiko wasn’t sure how it worked, the thing they had. Tsuruko came by on Sundays and took Yukiko wherever. To a park, or to a zoo, and once, to a Cheapies. She always sent a terribly formal text in advance. On Sundays, she wore perfumes and dressed nice, with heels and bracelets. Wherever they went, she paid for Yukiko’s tickets and coffees. She had an habit of taking Yukiko’s hand when she was excited, and then would forget to let it go. Sometimes Tsuruko gave Yukiko a kiss on the cheek when she said goodbye, and later Yukiko had to stuff her face into Hime’s fur and wail for a couple of minutes. ‘Who does that,’ she asked Hime. ‘Who – _does_ – _that_ ’. She meant: who did that, with her. Nobody who had a look on Yukiko, a good look, and was in her right mind, would like to take her on cutesy surprise friendship trips. Hell, Yukiko had a good look on herself every morning in the cracked mirror hung in the communal bathroom, and she didn’t see the appeal.  She was mean, and pathetic, and kind of old, and –

‘Here we go!’ Tsuruko said, too loud, and pushed through the crowd. Yukiko followed, as she did. Nihomabashi station. Yukiko never went there – skyscrapers and the Emperor’s garden, and tourists. Thanks but no thanks. Tsuruko bounced next to her, giddy with her surprise, but determined not to let it out a second too soon. She bit her lips so hard they were red. Yukiko tried not to stare, and failed.

Tsuruko halted. Yukiko looked up. The building was too low to be a skyscraper, and there were knots of vines and bushes poking out of it. It was weird, but Yukiko tried not to dislike it, not on the spot.

‘It’s an urban farm!’ Tsuruko finally said, and then she went on very fast. ‘’Cuz you said your mom lives in the countryside, and I figured, gosh, you must miss it a lot, right, and then I remembered, my sister, you met her, she was a junior assistant on this project, y’know, she told me there was this cool farm smacked just in the middle of the city, and what’s better than that, and I called her, and she called a friend of a friend, and they will give us a tour! Neat, right?’

Yukiko blinked. ‘Right.’

The farm was nothing like the countryside, which made it more bearable. Large LED lamps hung above the plots of soil, closed in metal and wooden boxes. Rice grew in water containers shaped like spirals, eel-like. Thick vines coiled on strange metal constructions. The guide, a man in a suit, spoke mostly to Tsuruko, and mostly boring shit, like, ‘In the absence of sunlight, the plants are sustained by artificial light from light-emitting diodes, metal halide lamps, and high-pressure sodium vapor lamps’, and then Tsuruko asked a smart question, like, ‘Isn’t it very energy-intensive?’ Yukiko was a few steps behind them, staring at the steam rising above the lettuce heads, at the flowers bursting from the floor, the small hard pumpkins, dark green, stuck next to the stairs. It wasn’t so bad. Weird, yeah, but Yukiko could handle it. Tsuruko turned every now and then, just to smile at her, to make sure Yukiko’s there, and it made Yukiko feel rooted, here and now, on Tsuruko’s side.

The suit led them to a salad bar and Yukiko let it slip she hadn’t had a fresh vegetable in a month.

Tsuruko’s mouth made a round ‘o’. Yukiko was doomed. ‘Yukiko!’ Tsuruko shouted. ‘You can buy fresh produce here! We totally should get you some!’ They left with four ecologic bags, full of lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes and lemons, packets of herbs and boxes of rice, because, Tsuruko reasoned, you always need more rice. It made the climb back to Yukiko’s apartment more of a struggle, but it was – sweet, Yukiko allowed in the privacy of her internal monologue, it was sweet of Tsuruko to get her all this healthy food, and to carry her grocery bags up four flights of stairs.

Of course, on the last turn, they bumped into Ran.

‘Wow!’ Ran said, and Yukiko felt her body tense, arms turn inwards, fists curl. ‘Now you gotta be fuckin’ with me!’

‘R – Ran –‘ her voice broke.

She still had that fucking headband.

‘You won’t even have a beer with me, but you’re gonna go grocery shop with,’ Ran stopped. Yukiko looked at her, looking at Tsuruko, and saw it. Ran’s eyes went wilder, her smile turned meaner. ‘Oh, hell no,’ she laughed. ‘Are you the Nice Girl Yukiko tried to hook up with?’

Tsuruko bent her head. ‘I am – not sure I follow?’

‘Babe, you missed the text of your life.’

Yukiko strengthened her grasp on the ecologic bags. If she swung, it would hurt. It would also ruin the tomatoes, but she didn’t care. The pumpkins would leave some nasty bruises. ‘Ran. Get out. And don’t come back’.

Tsuruko finally looked at her, then back at Ran. She moved to stand between them, with all her six feet and six inches. Ran faltered, but then she raised her hands, played along.

‘Hey, no need to get defensive,’ she said, in the tone she used to explain things to Yukiko, when Yukiko was, she said, bein’ pain in the ass, not the fun kind. ‘I’m just chatting to, lemme get this straight, my girlfriend of six years’.

‘We’re not!’ Yukiko wanted Tsuruko to look at her. ‘We’re not – anything! I’m done with you! A – and -  it’s been a year! Leave me alone!’

‘Alone?’ Ran repeated and, oh shit, here she goes. ‘Is that what you want? You think what, babe over there will stick with you, after all the shit you pull her through?’ It was bullshit, Yukiko knew it was bullshit, but here they were, and Tsuruko had to listen to Ran, all because Yukiko did too much too dumb shit in her life to ever leave it behind. ‘Nice Girl, I’d keep an eye on your wallet. You don’t wanna –‘

‘Excuse me,’ Tsuruko interrupted. ‘Miss – Ran,’ she pushed her hair off her face and spoke louder. ‘Forgive me if I am too blunt, but there seems to be a misunderstanding. You appear to be operating under an assumption that you and my associate are in some form of a relationship. However, as as my associate has just explicitly stated, this isn't true. Therefore, your coming here and harassing her might be considered inappropriate, if we are generous, and a felony, if we are not. And, if I may’ she had to push the hair off her face again, ‘I am not particularly inclined towards generosity right now.’

Ran gaped. ‘The fuck? Is this a threat?’

‘Is it?’ Tsuruko gave her a bright smile. ‘I would have to ask one of my very good friends from the police’.

‘Come on. You’re not gonna call the cops on me’.

‘She won’t,’ Yukiko touched Tsuruko’s arm, just so. ‘But next time you show up here, or at the market, I will’. She never did – not even consider it, because it was her fault, always. But, Tsuruko knew her shit. If Tsuruko said she could call the cops – let’s.

‘You left out the internet café,’ Ran said, lame.

‘Well, guess what, Ran,’ Yukiko fought down the hysteric giggle she felt bubbling up in her throat, ‘I have better things to do than to lose in mah-jong. Tsuruko, let’s go.’

Ran open her mouth. Then closed it. Yukiko didn’t stay to watch what she would do next, just pushed next to her to open the door and let Tsuruko in. She dropped the bags on her kitchen table, and slowly slid to the floor. Hime climbed on her knees and meowed, but suddenly Yukiko didn’t have the energy even to say hello to her. She didn’t have the energy to do anything, but to rest on the floor as Tsuruko unpacked the bags, put the rice in the cupboard and laid the vegetables and the fruit in an empty carton box, that Yukiko didn’t remember was there.

Tsuruko was humming. As if nothing happened. Yukiko felt empty inside. Empty of Ran. Six years of her life.

Tsuruko sat down next to her – their arms bumped – and said, ‘Y’know, I like your kitchen.’

 

 

It didn’t start like a fight. Yukiko came over to the Sakanas and, a good guest she was, she brought some boxed French pastry from the mini-mart down at the train station. Tsuhugi made tea, Hatsu washed blood off her hands and they sat down: Tsuhugi with Hatsu on the couch, and Yukiko on the beanbag Tsuruko bought when Yukiko’s visits became regular. Tsuruko squatted with her arms on the table and took a cream roll from the box.

Ten minutes later, Yukiko was up and on the verge of a tantrum.

‘I just,’ she threw hard hands in the air, as if that helped. ‘I just said I am looking for a new apartment!’

‘You know we won’t cover the rent without Tsuruko!’ Hatsu yelled from the couch, where she and Tsuhugi were closer now, as always together against Yukiko. ‘You know how much we get paid at the stall, you do the books!’

‘There’s two of you and one of me, okay?! And,’ Yukiko spat, a little. ‘And, Mrs Sakana is your aunt! So! If you need money, go to her!’

At that, Hatsu’s face went puffed and red. Her hands twitched, as if for a knife.

‘We,’ Hatsu said through teeth, ‘won’t need to, if Tsuruko stays with us!’

‘Well, I don’t care! I want to live in a nice apartment with my girlfriend, and, like, not wait for the day my crazy ex finally breaks in!’

There, Yukiko threw the ugliest thing she could. The silence stretched. She tried to slow her breath down.

Tsuhugi carefully closed her hands over Hatsu’s. ‘I get, it,’ she said, carefully. ‘I really do, but, we need Tsuruko, so –‘ and before Yukiko could interrupt, she asked, ‘why not move with us?’

Yukiko opened her mouth, and closed it.

‘Tsuhugi, you didn’t just ask the woman who made your life a living hell for four years to move in with you.’

Tsuhugi sighed.

‘All of us got over it Hatsu, so-‘

‘What the fuck?’ Yukiko recovered her voice. ‘I’m not gonna move in with you people.’

Tsuhugi frowned.

‘Uh, that’s rude,’ Yukiko suppressed the urge to laugh, ‘and I’m not sure you have a better plan?’

Yukiko took a deep breath. ‘I do, actually.’ She tried to keep her voice even. A normal person voice, a polite discussion voice. ‘If you move in with Jun, and Hatsu goes upstairs, I could live with Tsuruko here, everybody happy.’

‘I – I – I can’t, with Jun,’ Tsuhugi stammered. ‘I’m not ready.’

‘Not ready! You’ve been  together for two years now!’

Tsuhugi shrieked. ‘And what about it!’

‘Tsuhugi can’t live without me.’ Hatsu said.

‘No, I –‘

‘So why don’t _you_ move upstairs? You’re basically best friends with Shizuru,’

‘Hatsu, this is not –‘

‘And you’ll live next doors to Tsuruko, too.’

Hatsu smiled. Yukiko felt sick.

The tantrum was rising again and she tried to fight it. She could fight it – she could do that – an adult – a normal person –

‘I’m not gonna do that.’

‘You’re just being difficult now,’ Hatsu sighed. ‘Why not?’

‘Cause! I’m not! Gonna!’ She kept her hands to her sides, she didn’t stomp, she could contain this. ‘Tsuruko, do you have, like, anything to say on the subject?’

Tsuruko took her eyes off the pastry. She gulped.

‘Um, no? But, um, I can get some beer from the fridge, if you want some?’

Then, Yukiko gave in.

‘Fuck! No, I don’t want beer!’ Tsuruko’s lip wobbled, so Yukiko turned to Sakanas. ‘Thanks everyone, I had a great time here. Thanks for all your support, and all your,’ she did the air quotation marks, ‘“friendship”.’ She didn’t care. ‘Good-fuckin’-bye’

She grabbed her jacket and her backpack, kicked the bin in the corridor, and made an effort to slam the door extra hard. The fury kept her moving for the next couple steps and then, like the bitch it was, it just left. Yukiko slumped against the bannisters. She curled her knees to her chest and closed her eyes.

 

 

After they let her out from the hospital, she went to the market. She locked herself into the backroom, found the least bloody and dirty corner, and stayed there, her arm for a pillow. The blood loss and the drugs they gave her – whatever it was, it knocked her out, dead.

Shizuru woke her up.

Yukiko must’ve socked her one, but Shizuru wasn’t bothered.

‘’S five,’ she said.

‘Fuck. It can’t be,’ Yukiko slipped out her phone from her pocket. It was. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m fucked -‘

‘Tanaka. Didja sleep here?’

‘What?! No!’

Shizuru held her gaze.

‘I didn’t!’

‘Okay,’ Shizuru sighed. ‘Quit yellin’.’ She took out a cigarette. She lit it and inhaled, deeply. ‘Here’s the thing. ‘M not sayin’ you sleep here, but if you were lookin’ for a corner, I have a decent couch.’ Shizuru said it slow, like there was no hurry, no emergency. ‘What d’ya think?’

Yukiko felt blood rise to her cheeks. ‘I don’t need that.’

Shizuru sighed, again. ‘Didn’t say you need anythin’, she raised her empty hand. ‘But if you wanted, no questions asked.’

Yukiko didn’t want it. It was pathetic – but she was tired. The floor at the stall was cold, hard, and gross as fuck. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay, fine. Whatever.’

She made it to the end of their shift. She scratched Mura and threw a crab at Tsuhugi when Tsuhugi asked why Yukiko had a bandage on her face, but she made it. She fell on Shizuru’s couch, no lunch, no shower, no word. Her body still ached, and her cheek started to itch. She tried to slip a nail under the bandage, but the nurse glued it tight to her skin. Fuck. She fell asleep and woke up. She didn’t move. Shizuru asked if Yukiko wanted any stuff from her place and Yukiko gave her the keys and Ran’s address. She’d laugh too, but she was tired. She fell asleep. She woke up. Shizuru was smoking.

‘Met that roomie of yours,’ she said. ‘A piece of work, ain’t she?’ Shizuru took a drag. ‘Talks lotsa shit.’ She let out a cloud of smoke. ‘Ya know, Tanaka, with that girl, and that bandage on yer face, why don’t ya take a break?’ Yukiko blinked.  ‘You must be tired as hell. Sakana is good people, she’ll let ya rest for a while. You never use yer free days anyway.’

‘I guess.’ Yukiko mumbled. ‘’d be nice.’

She slept for a long time. She woke up and the flat was empty. It must have been eight in the morning, or nine. Yukiko took a shower, and looked into a box Shizuru brought from Ran’s. She picked up her sweater, the one with the kitten pattern patches, and a pair of pyjama pants. She returned to the couch, and switched on the TV. There was an anime marathon on. When Shizuru came back, she heated up a chicken noodle soup, with an egg cracked on top. Yukiko had half a bowl, and slept.

Time melted, like a drop of oil on a frying pan. It ran in a slow circle. Sometimes Yukiko woke up at eight, sometimes at noon. Sometimes she didn’t and just laid on the sofa, and blinked every few hours. She watched the TV and she ate the soup, and she snuck cigarettes from Shizuru when Shizuru was in the bathroom, and smoked them on the balcony when Shizuru was at the market. It was spring. Looking into the bathroom mirror, Yukiko took the bandage off. Poked the pink skin. They put tiny stiches there, too tiny to see. It wasn’t that bad, the stiches. The shards of glass they had to pick out, well, that hurt like a bitch. They said she would have a scar.

Of course she would.

Shizuru came back and asked if Yukiko wanted a smoke. ‘I don’t smoke,’ Yukiko said. Shizuru shrugged. She rested on the rail, head titled up to the sky, limbs loose. She stretched her arms, and the muscles under her skin moved. Yukiko almost choked, and remembered how the ice machine had broken, and how Shizuru had fixed it, her white tank top soaked to the last thread. Yukiko grabbed the closest pillow and sighed into it. ‘Fuck,’ she said to the pillow. ‘Fuck me, and fuck my life.’ She was running out of breath. ‘And fuck Ran.’

On a warmer day, Yukiko went out to get groceries and to see if there were any offers of rooms to rent put up in the neighbourhood. She made it down the street. There, she saw a girl in a white plastic headband. She felt sick. She ran back to Shizuru’s flat and shut herself in the bathroom. There had to be an electric razor somewhere, Shizuru wouldn’t get the buzzcut without it. Yukiko found it in a box after a shampoo.

It was her dumb hair. Ran would recognize it, if it was her on the street. Ran would always recognize it. Yukiko switched the razor on and swiped it close to her head –

‘Fuck!’ she yelled. It did not look good. She heard a noise and then the doors to the bathroom flung open.

‘Tanaka?’ Shizuru had her shoes still on, and she stunk of fish. ‘You okay here?’

‘I, uh’ Yukiko waved the razor, switched it off, then waved again. ‘I’m incredible. Thanks for asking.’

Shizuru looked at her, and sighed. ‘Wait for me.’

‘Yeah.’

She came back barefoot, the blood-stained top changed for a flannel shirt. ‘You’re too tall,’ she said. ‘Bathtub fine with ya?’ It wasn’t, but Yukiko took her socks off and sat there, and listened to Shizuru perch herself on the countertop behind. The razor buzzed and moved above Yukiko’s ear. ‘Easy,’ Shizuru murmured. Yukiko tried to get rid of the tension, so she watched her yellow hair pile on the bottom of the tub. ‘’S gonna be short,’ Shizuru said, ‘with the start ya made.’ Whatever. Yukiko wanted it gone. She closed her eyes and listened to the razor.

When it stopped, Yukiko almost missed it, the quiet buzz of it. Shizuru moved behind her, wiped the loose hairs off Yukiko’s head, and then wiped it off her neck – and this freaked Yukiko out, the light touch just above her collar– so she lunged forward, away from it – and Shizuru must’ve lost her balance, because she fell – on Yukiko – and Yukiko had Shizuru’s knees between her shoulder-blades, so she moved, like – and so she ended up pressed under Shizuru, their faces – close.

‘Uh,’ Yukiko managed.

‘I’m gonna get up now.’

‘No!’ Shizuru stared. Yukiko flushed. ‘Fuck, I mean.’ She missed that. ‘You don’t have to.’ Shizuru gave a small nod, and Yukiko closed her eyes, said a prayer and lifted her head just enough for a kiss. Shizuru, after a moment, kissed back. It was – nice. To be touched – to be touched and to not be scarred, or patched up. Just – so. Shizuru moved, and Yukiko felt she should’ve said – thank you, or sorry, or please, kiss me again.

‘Tanaka,’ Shizuru said. ‘If we’re doin’ this, we shoulda – move somewhere. So I will – get outta the bathtub and go to my room. You wanna come, come – you don’t, don’t and ‘s fine by me.’ She kissed Yukiko again, somewhere on her chin. ‘Easy.’

Shizuru was gone and Yukiko was alone in the bathtub. With the sweat and her cut hair. ‘What,’ she addressed the lamp flickering above, ‘the fuck did I just do?’ What she did was, she made out with her co-worker – her subordinate, fuck – and she hadn’t even broke up yet with her girlfriend, the girlfriend Yukiko had lived with for five years, lived together till some three weeks ago. God, wouldn’t Ran have a laugh at that –

So Yukiko got out of the bathtub and out of the flat. Took her shit with her, went to the train station and bought a ticket to Nagoya. From Nagoya, she knew, it was just an hour on the bus to Itomori.

 

 

The market was closed on Sundays, so on some Saturday nights Yukiko went to Shinjuku Ni-Chome.  Nothing ever happened on these trips. Yukiko slumped at a bar stall and did a shot, traced a circle on the top of her glass with her finger, watched. Sometimes other girls sat on a stall next to hers and asked for her name, but they were always gone before the song changed, lost in the flickering light. They were always at college, the girls Yukiko’s age. She never tried to apply, there was no money for cram schools and no money for the commute between Itomori and wherever they’d be. But Yukiko had a knack for maths and her mom said, you couldn’t go hungry if you could do the numbers. And nobody could do the numbers like Yukiko did. And hell, it did get her a job – she did the books for Mrs Sakana, and that was a job. Of course, she did the books under her desk for now – Sakana paid her for cutting fish, selling fish, and moving boxes – but she did the books alright, and she would soon go up. She asked for another shot.

The thing was, she couldn’t talk to these girls. It was too much. She clammed up. They smiled at her, and all Yukiko could think of was, she got fish blood on her sneakers and she sweated too much in her jacket, and she had never kissed anyone. And she had always figured, she would grow out of it – the sweating, the flushing, the lump in her throat. She’d just wait it out. But the more she waited, the worse it got, and there she was, eighteen years old, in a gay bar and afraid to say a word to anybody.

 

There was an announcement on a door of Yukiko’s grocery shop. It said, cat gave birth, and, good home for the kittens. Yukiko phoned them up and came by on a Saturday afternoon. She doesn’t remember the house, the people, but she remembers the small basket, and how it felt, the kitten in her hands, so small she could cup it. Hime purred, and dug its tiny claws in Yukiko’s sweater, still reeking of fish. Yukiko got the savings she kept in her pillow-case and went out to find Hime the best bed, the best toys and the best litter-box she could get, with the little money she had and a good deal of haggling. Saturday night, she couldn’t fall asleep, wide awake and wary of the wonder that was Hime curled on her stomach. On Sunday she moved from the couch to pour some cereal for herself and put out a tuna brick for Hime. Yukiko scratched her behind her ears, and under her chin, and she tried to give Hime a belly rub, but Hime always put her paws on Yukiko’s hand, and Yukiko lost it then. She cried three times and didn’t shut up for a minute.

 

Then Hime got sick. They said it was ear polips, surgery ten thousand yen. Yukiko wasn’t sure she ever seen ten thousand yen. The money she had with her when she first came to Tokyo was five thousand, her mom’s life’s savings. And all she had brought besides was a white shirt (from the high school uniform, the emblem unstitched), and a sweater, a pair of jeans, a change of underwear and a hair-clip her mom had given her for birthday. She lived in a shoebox and could fit all she had into a backpack. ‘Ten thousand yen,’ Yukiko told Hime, ‘Mommy has no clue how to scrap that much.’

 

So – when she saw a wallet forgotten on the counter, she leapt for it. The bartender raised her eyebrows. ‘’s my friend’s,’ Yukiko said, quick. ‘I – oh, I can see her – right there, so I’ll just,’ she slid off the stool, ‘Yeah’.

She found an empty booth, and sat low.  As she opened the wallet, she made sure the vase on the table was right between her and the bar. There was a student ID, a bank card – Yukiko considered it – and, four five hundred yen bills. Yukiko glanced to the bar – couldn’t see it for the rose in the vase, plastic and glittering – and took the bills out. She crumpled them and slowly moved a hand under her sweater, stuffed the bills in her bra. Worst case scenario, somebody saw her and assumed she was just drunk enough to – whatever. She laid her hands on the table, closed the wallet and breathed out.

‘Hi babe.’

A girl leaned against the booth, arm resting on the partition. She looked like a shadow, cruel pink light flickering behind her. All Yukiko could see was a white headband.

‘So, the butch on the bar told me you have my wallet,’ the girl said, falling on the seat opposite to Yukiko’s.

‘I – I do?’ Yukiko tried to make out the features of her face, now half-lit. The girl noticed her gaze and smiled, dark and wide. Yukiko looked down. ‘I do, here.’ She pushed the wallet towards her.

‘Thanks for keepin’ it warm for me,’ the girl put the wallet in the front pocket her skirt. ‘Wouldn’t be cool to get robbed on a night out, right? Way to kill the mood.’

‘Y-yeah.’

Yukiko wasn’t looking up from the table – and the girl’s tennis skirt, and the hem of her jacket, and her hands on the table, dark nail polish and rough cuticles, bitten.

‘Sooooo.’ The girl took the plastic rose out of the vase, twirled it in her hands. ‘You from Tokyo?’

‘Y-yeah.’

‘Uni?’

‘Yeah.’

The twirl paused for a moment, then resumed. ‘Sweet, where at?’

‘I, at, uh.’ Yukiko couldn’t think of a name. What did the people say? ‘The Tokyo University – the one, in the centre. Near Emperor’s gardens. The University of Tokyo’.

A whistle. ‘Fuck me,’ empathetically. ‘High class. I didn’t get in. Wanna brag how it is, up there?’

Yukiko giggled, then winced at the sound of it.

‘Or,’ the plastic rose dropped to the table, ‘you wanna do something else?’

Yukiko looked up. The girl was staring at her, with a wide, toothy grin. She leaned across the table.

The touch blinded out the neon light of the bar, drowned out the music and the talking. Yukiko must have said something and the girl must have replied, because they stood up and pushed through the crowd, to the bathroom. Yukiko barely registered it. All her consciousness burnt in skin under the girl’s fingers.

She remembered the money only when Ran started to unhook her bra.

 

Yukiko can give the facts: she met with Ran next day in a café on her campus; she moved in with Ran two weeks later; five years later she moved out. They went to Okinawa once and drunk rice wine on the beach. An empty inflatable dinghy floated on the wave, and they hopped into it, with bottles in their hands and algae glued to their knees. Tiny fish came to the edge of the water and put their tiny mouths to Yukiko’s finger as she drew circles and spirals in the water.

They fell asleep and woke up sick, of the sun, the sea and the booze. There was no shore in sight. Yukiko vomited into the water. ‘Sorry,’ she said to the tiny fish. ‘No prob,’ Ran replied, still drunk.

‘Not you. The fish. You – ‘ Yukiko wanted to push her off the damn thing – the wine smile, the new black bikini, the heart-shaped glasses and the fucking headband. ‘You got us here.’

‘S nice.’ Ran pushed her glasses down. ‘Just chill babe. Kay?’

It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t _kay_. But Ran gave Yukiko a look, like Yukiko was crazy – like she was a baby – and Yukiko shut up and waited for the coast patrol to find them, and then for the policemen to let them free (no, Ran said, they didn’t mean to _steal_ the dinghy). Yukiko went back to the hotel with Ran, and slept with her, and lived with her. She tried to remember it well: a fun summer adventure with a happy end. After some time, she gave up. Hated it, and Ran. Hated it, when she stood with her back to the wall, her hand on her cheek, sticky with blood, a broken bottle between her and Ran, who was sobering up – at least, enough to make a call. She slurred on the name of the hospital.

In the elevator, Yukiko glued herself to the opposite wall, but Ran reached across. She touched Yukiko’s cheek with her finger.

‘Gross,’ she said with a lazy smile.

‘Fuck off.’

‘Oh, c’mon. ‘S not even deep’.

Outside, there was no ambulance – just a cab. Ran put Yukiko in a seat and blew her a kiss.

‘See ya tomorrow!’

Yukiko curled in the seat and watched the blood on her fingers in the shifting night lights, and wondered if it was too late.

 

 

After the Okinawa trip and before the hospital – it’s been years – Yukiko was promoted to a stall supervisor and Tsuhugi Sakana came to work for her aunt. After Tsuhugi’s first shift, Hatsu threw a small party to celebrate it, with sake and sushi deluxe. Yukiko waited full five minutes, had two sushi rolls, and hid the third in the pocket of her apron, before reminding them they weren’t allowed to consume alcohol on the premises.

‘But –‘ Hatsu tried, and Yukiko interrupted her with a smile.

‘Rules are rules. And as your supervisor,’ Yukiko paused, ‘my job is to make sure you follow them’.

She left Hatsu cursing and Tsuhugi mum. Yukiko deserved it, to turn from  people so all they could do was to clean up their pathetic celebrations from her stall. It was hers, she put her life there. Always came first, always stayed back to check the books, always with a smile for the customers – and god, how she tried to pick the best for them. It made her proud, to know the meat she found in the mess Mura presented as good stock, the meat she herself cut and put on a display – it would be cooked by a five stars cook, it would be served on silver.

She was almost happy. She didn’t think of Ran.

Yukiko made a perfect cut. The slab of meat turned a row of delicate fillets. She put them on a platter and called for Tsuhugi.

Called again.

‘Ye – e – es?’ Tsuhugi asked, hovering on the doorstep.

‘Take these,’ Yukiko pointed to the platter with her knife. Tsuhugi came closer. ‘Why did I have to call you twice?’

‘I, uh,’ Tsuhugi clutched the platter and stared at the fillets. ‘Sorry.’

‘Of course you’re sorry. But it doesn’t answer my question, does it?’ Yukiko tried to catch Tsuhugi’s eye. ‘Are you as dumb as you are incompetent?’ She asked, slow. Red blotches crept on Tsuhugi’s neck.

‘I said I’m sorry. I just,’ she stammered. ‘I was thinking about some – something’.

‘Oh, I see. You were thinking – about _something_. That makes it fine, then! If you are occupied with – _something_ – at your post!’

Yukiko blinked. She didn’t notice when she started yelling. Or when Tsuhugi dropped the platter. Tsuhugi was on her knees now, picking up the dirty fillets. Yukiko had made a perfect cut and Tsuhugi Sakana had ruined it.

Yukiko kept an eye on her. She watched her, days and days, and grew mad. Tsuhugi didn’t care – for the fish, or the customers, or the stall. She did just enough to keep her aunt off her feet, but no more. Hatsu might’ve bought a dozen of bottles of sake and it wouldn’t change a thing. Tsuhugi Sakana was distracted, and Yukiko took it for a personal offence.

 

 

‘Y’know,’ Tsuruko said in a raspy voice, on the edge of sleep, ‘I always figured, down the line, it’d be me and Tsuhugi’.

Yukiko stiffened. It was a hot summer afternoon, Yukiko’s free. They  had spread a blanket on the floor of Yukiko’s kitchen, and laid there. Took turns to get to the fridge and get popsicles. The heat, and the sweetness of the popsicles, and Tsuruko next to her, had made Yukiko loose – at ease, almost.

‘Oh,’ she said, with a bite. ‘I am sorry. Didn’t mean to come between you two’.

Tsuruko opened her eyes.

‘Oh no,’ she put her hand on Yukiko’s bare stomach, as if Yukiko could get up and leave. ‘Nonono, no. My bad. I didn’t mean we would be a thing like, you and I are. ’Cuz, no, it wouldn’t work out.’ Tsuruko turned to her back and let her hand slid. She wiped the hair off her forehead. ‘Like. She’s my kid and I’m her kid, y’know.’ Yukiko didn’t. She thought it was messed up, and she thought, what about Hatsu, and she thought, what about me. ‘But,’ Tsuruko smiled. ‘We used to always be together, sorta. Go on our Saturday dates.’

Yukiko didn’t want to listen to this.

‘Well, then Jun popped up’.

Tsuruko didn’t say more, just looked at the ceiling. Yukiko looked at it, too. There were stains from the steam, and a few cracks. The flat above, there used to be parties there, and Yukiko would throw a shoe and yell. She looked back on Tsuruko. Wondered if Tsuruko told anybody else and realized Tsuruko hadn’t, probably – hadn’t anybody else to tell these things to, half-asleep.

‘So you,’ Yukiko coughed. ‘You lived with her and the Jun thing?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’d flip. Just like – on the daily basis, if I had to see her, and –‘ she couldn’t stand it. If she and Tsuhugi – if Tsuhugi and Tsuruko – she didn’t want to talk, anymore. She hoped it had been enough.

Next to her, Tsuruko hummed. ‘She’s my family,’ she said. ‘Like, my parents and my sisters are the best, but they’re so,’ Tsuruko made a motion with her hand, a fast spin. Like a carousel, or a circus. ‘And Tsuhugi, and Hatsu – I spent more than half of my life with them’.

Yukiko curled back to her and tangled their legs together, a messy knot of fuzzy calves, glued with sweat. She pushed Tsuruko’s hair off her forehead, again, to see if Tsuruko was sad – she couldn’t tell, Tsuruko just quiet and strange.

‘Are you sad now?’ she asked. Tsuruko looked at her, and grinned.

‘Nah.’

 

 

Yukiko didn’t know how much time she was there, curled against the bannisters. She would have to get up soon and go back to hers, feed Hime. She hadn’t moved yet, the doors to the Sakanas’ flat still in her sight, the doorknob gleaming. She shouldn’t have left. She did, she would again. She should come back and couldn’t. She did fuck up – she yelled at Tsuhugi and they always took Tsuhugi’s side – Hatsu wouldn’t let her in, now.

Then the doors opened, and Tsuruko came down. She sat on the step next to Yukiko, not close enough for an accidental touch. Yukiko didn’t look at her – just glanced from the corner of her eye at Tsuruko’s slippers. Kitten slippers. Yukiko gave them to Tsuruko for their first Christmas together.

‘Well,’ Yukiko said, and her voice didn’t shake. Much.

Tsuruko turned. ‘Hi,’ she said. Yukiko still didn’t look at her.

‘Why are you here?’

‘I was hopin’ you’d be here’.

As if. ‘Lucky you.’

There was snot coming from her nose, so she had to sniff.

She wasn’t crying.

‘I can go first, if you wanna,’ Tsuruko said.

‘Have at it.’

‘So, sorry.’ Yukiko blinked. Tsuruko’s slippers blurred. ‘I screwed up back there.’

‘Not as big –‘ Fuck, there it was, the salt at the back of her throat. ‘Not as big as I did’.

‘It wasn’t that big,’ Tsuruko nudged. ‘They’ll get over it, just apologize’.

‘Still.’ Tsuruko put her arm over Yukiko to pull her closer. Yukiko let her. ‘And we didn’t figure out anything’.

‘Well, about that. What if – I lived here Monday to Friday – and with you on the weekends. I’d chip in with you both, to cover both rents’.

‘This is p–,’ Yukiko hiccupped. ‘Preposterous’. She looked up and saw Tsuruko look at her, open and sincere. God. ‘So much money,’ Yukiko said.

‘I have money,’ Tsuruko said back. ‘And I want to live with you. And with Sakanas, too. And if that’s the way to make it happen, I’ll take it’.

Yukiko cried all over Tsuruko’s pretty blouse. A delicate fabric, probably ruined. She didn’t know what to say – what to do – with all this. Two hours ago, Sakanas told her she couldn’t live with Tsuruko and she threw a fit, but now Tsuruko came and gave it to her, and Yukiko didn’t know what do with it. She didn’t know how to take it, or how to give it back. She knew how to cut a fish and how to draw a percent, and how to juggle two gachapons out of a machine instead of one. She knew how to run, and how to make a bed out of a bush, and how to hate. This – this was too much. But if she could stay here – and not move till Tsuruko moved – she hoped it would be enough.

 

 

 

The grave has to be three feet deep. Far from the water, but there is no water close to the house. They dig together, in gloves and with spades, but when it comes to the burial, Yukiko stands back, eyes closed. She hears the creak of the crate, and the shuffle of the ice, when Tsuruko takes Hime – Hime’s – up. They brought the blanket Hime liked, full of fish smell, so they could wrap her in it, so it felt like her bed, like home, a little.

It’s quiet when it happens. Tsuruko kneels above the grave and lowers the rolled blanket inside.

‘Do you want to say anything?’

Yukiko shakes her head. Tsuruko speaks, and Yukiko doesn’t hear the words, just the soft lull of Tsuruko’s voice. They take the spades again and work. The grave fills. Tsuruko’s nose is red, and her cheeks shine. Yukiko doesn’t know if it’s grief, or effort. It might be both.

Once they’re done, they stay there. The unearthed soil is dark against the yellow grass.

‘Like gardening,’ Tsuruko says. ‘A bit.’

‘Yeah, no. Nothing grows here, with the tracks and the highway.’

Tsuruko frowns. ‘And these?’ She throws her hands, to the yellow grass and bare weeds.

Yukiko is too tired to argue.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Okay.’

As they climb back to the house, the wind murmurs in the fields.

**Author's Note:**

> i planned and wrote this fic in march, after i finished a marathon of 'always sunny in philadelphia'. some choices i made re: tone and characterization reflect this. the dinghy scene is a direct reference to the rum ham sequence; i am also conscious of borrowing a phrase from mxingno's brilliant 'The Gang Learns to Exist in the Moment'. itomori is a fictional town from 'kimi no na wa'; its descriptions draw from the movie. the urban farm is real; it's pasona urban farm by kono designs.
> 
> also, if it wasn't culturally inappropriate, shizuru would smoke weed.


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